Page:Robert the Bruce and the struggle for Scottish independence - 1909.djvu/179

1307 A.D.] The Prince of Wales left his father near the Border and entered Scotland at the head of a powerful army. On July 11th, he received the unconditional surrender of King Robert's castle of Lochmaben, passed northward, and before September 13th had taken Kildrummie. It is the tradition of that neighbourhood that the fall of this stronghold was hastened by treachery. Some one set fire to the forage stored in the chapel of the castle, and in the confusion the English were admitted. The Scottish, queen and princesses, dreading the rigours of a siege, had, on the approach of the English army, sought sanctuary in St. Duthac's chapel at Tain; but it availed them nothing, for the Earl of Ross seized them and handed them over to the English. Nigel de Brus was taken at Kildrummie, with Sir Alexander de Lindsay and Sir Robert Boyd. Nigel was sent for trial to Berwick, and was there executed as a traitor.

As for the ladies, singular directions were given for the security of three of them. The Earl of Buchan, it is said, wished to kill his Countess for the affront she had put on him by crowning King Robert; but this Edward would not allow. He gave orders that she, the Princess Marjorie, and Marie de Brus should be confined in cages; which was literally carried out. But this was not quite such a barbarous punishment as it sounds, for English waiting-women were provided to attend on the ladies, and the "kages," which were to be constructed inside turrets of the castles of Roxburgh and